Garden waste

Yes, you can buy additional garden waste bins at a one-off cost of £34 per bin and £27.50 per bin for collections in 2024/25.

Our collection crews will not accept any excess garden waste that is presented alongside (or on top of) your bin. If you occasionally have more waste than can fit inside your bin, please hold this over and place it loose inside your bin ready for your next scheduled collection day.

Alternatively, if you regularly generate additional garden waste and want us to collect it, please purchase an additional bin and subscription.

Yes, however you can only use special biodegradable sacks purchased from us. The price will be £8 per roll of 20 sacks which includes delivery and collection.

Due to the composition of the sacks, they have an expected shelf life of 12 months. Please bear this in mind when placing your order.

Please note that this service is only available to households not on wheeled bin collections.

You are welcome to keep your bin and use it for some other purpose such as storing filled recycling sacks and cardboard in between collections. If you use your bin for storage, please make sure you take the sacks out of the bin on your collection day and place them at your usual collection point.

If you don’t want to keep your bin, we can arrange for it to be collected on request. You can email our customer Service Centre on csc@braintree.gov.uk who will arrange a collection.

Please note that if you return your bin and later decide you want to subscribe to the service, you will have to pay for a new bin.

The standard size for new, additional and replacement bins is 180L.

If you currently have a 140L bin, you can upgrade to a 180L on request.

If you currently have a 240L bin, you can continue to use it until it needs to be replaced, whether that be through loss or damage. At that point, the replacement will be a 180L bin.

We are no longer offering 140L or 240L bins.

Until the new garden waste subscription service starts on 4 March, replacement green bins will be provided free of charge and can be ordered from our website. From this date, residents will be responsible for their green bins and will be asked to pay to replace them when they break.

Any bins which break due to the handling by our crew or our vehicles will be replaced free of charge.

We would actively encourage those who don’t opt-in to the new service to dispose of their garden waste by doing things such as:

• composting at home
• joining a neighbourhood composting scheme
• taking it to any of Essex County Council’s Household Waste and Recycling Centres

There is nothing to stop you sharing a bin with a neighbour to help keep costs down, although the bin and subscription can only be registered to one address (and that address would own the bin).

We are asking residents not to do this, as composting is by far the most environmentally friendly way of dealing with garden waste.

To help Essex residents get started with home composting, you can purchase a subsidised compost bin for your garden.

Love Essex also runs FREE online composting training. To find out all about the benefits of composting at home and how to get started visit the Love Essex home composting page.